What to write: Try to summarize your life in two or three sentences. Take your time. Think about your past. “But mostly think about who you are today and how you got that way,” says Roberta Temes, PhD, psychologist and author of How to Write a Memoir in 30 Days. “Maybe you want to focus on a certain relationship, maybe a certain theme...or maybe a feeling that has persisted for years.”
The people you meet who affect your life, and the success and downfalls you experience help to create who you become. Even the bad experiences can be learned from. In fact, they are probably the most poignant and important ones. If someone hurts you, betrays you, or breaks your heart, forgive them, for they have helped you learn about trust and the importance of being cautious when you open your heart. If someone loves you, love them back unconditionally, not only because they love you, but because in a way, they are teaching you to love and how to open your heart and eyes to things.
Build tension and suspense. Structure the narrative so that you have a series of stories leading up to the climax of the conflict. If your central conflict is trying to reach the goal of competing in the Olympics for skiing, lead up to it with stories of small successes and plenty of failures. You want your readers to ask, will she make it? Can he do it? What's going to happen next?
This is an extremely emotional and intimate type of writing. You share a personal experience with your readers in a detailed manner. Your audience should have an opportunity to see the event or person that you’ve written about through your eyes and understand your feelings. Any personal essay has two main aspects: the description of a particular situation and how it has influenced your worldview and life. Generally, the personal essay is the shortest form of autobiographical writing, along with the essay for college.
Today I am lucky. I came out of my routine, finding out solutions for mysilly problems. At this age, I am wasting my time, a large part of it, into finding solutions for unnecessary issues. Today I made my first positive step and came to this wonderful and resourful blog post. The post is humarous, real, motivational and touching. I will keep coming to this blogs daily and spend a couple of hours on similar blogs.
Below, you’ll find an example of an autobiography provided by one of our experienced writers. You are welcome to use it as a template for your own autobiography. Although you can borrow some ideas about proper structure and writing style, you can’t copy our sample without citing it properly. Please, don’t commit plagiarism! We believe that you are able to create an autobiography that will be no worse than our autobiography example for high school students.
The autobiography is the longest and the fullest story about yourself. You can write it for your personal use in order to structure and perpetuate your memories. If you are sure that your life will be an interesting theme to read about, you may create an autobiography for the wider public. An autobiography covers the period from the day of your birth until today. If you think that your life journey will be a good example for others, include the information on how you have achieved your goals and success and how you got your autobiography published.
What were the narrator’s desires in the memoir? What was motivating the narrator to share this particular story with the reader? Often, memoirs can be cathartic for the writer. Perhaps the writer was trying to process a year of grieving and loss, as Didion does in The Year of Magical Thinking, or perhaps the writer was trying to describe a childhood in a concentration camp, as Spiegelman does in his memoir Maus. Consider the motivations of the writer for putting down their story and presenting it to readers.
Writing your life story can be one of the most complex forms of storytelling. It could involve emerging themes, narrative flow, and re-creating dialogue from memory. Or it can be surprisingly easy and fun. What if I was to show you a powerful and unique method of capturing a dynamic life by using legacy themes? It involves just ten of these. Best of all, these legacy themes are easy to write with only 2-3 pages for each. If you have ever written a high school term essay, you can write your life story.
Create an overarching plot. Now that you know what content you want to include in your autobiography, think about how you want to structure your book. Like any great book, your autobiography needs a great plot. Work with the material you have to craft an interesting story that builds toward a climax and ultimately resolves. Create a narrative arc[3] by organizing and filling out your written memories and anecdotes so that they flow together logically.
Many people who have something to tell, have an experience, or have the knowledge and vision “as it should be.” What if you decided to write your own book and it’s not a novel about love and adventures? To become a good writer or to write an interesting book is not an easy task. Unfortunately, this won’t totally depend on hard work, diligence and regular training: you can sit with a laptop, paper, pen or voice recorder at least eight hours every day – and still, you will get something dull and colorless that nobody wants to read. Not always does the desire to write a book match the capabilities and talent. But making effort and progress is still necessary. Anyone who wants to write their first book, should read and write, try different styles and genres, and listen to the world around. The main thing is to throw into trash away all “must” and “deserving / not deserving of attention,” ideas which aspiring authors often suffer from. Here are an autobiography topics list and autobiography examples which can help you.
What's your central conflict? What's the biggest obstacle life presented that took years to overcome or come to terms with? Maybe it's an illness you were diagnosed with at an early age, a relationship wrought with turmoil, a series of career setbacks, a goal you worked for decades to achieve, or any other number of things. Look to your favorite books and movies for more examples of conflicts.
Not necessarily a writer, but still want to record your story somehow? Don’t think that there’s no hope for you. Consider making audio or video recordings. Audio recordings can be especially helpful. You can take audio recordings to a writer/transcriptionist who can then type out your story in a logical order. Working closely with a writer as you verbally record your stories can be an alternative when you feel you are too close to the story.
Not only does writing about your life story change you, it can change others as well. Your history can have a powerful effect on other people’s lives! Especially if you’ve learned, grown and changed through the years. And I suspect you have. You wouldn’t be searching for information on how to write about your life story if nothing every happened to you 🙂
Show, don't tell. Engage your reader by showing them a specific process or scene, rather than narrate directly to them. For example, write a scene that shows the reader how you discovered your mother’s letters from her family in Poland after her death. This will give the reader key information to help move the story forward, without telling them in a long, uneventful passage.
Develop a central theme, main idea or thesis that clearly explains the purpose behind your autobiography. For example, your theme might be about how you overcame obstacles to become a stronger person, or it might explain why a particular passion -- such as mountain climbing or rescuing animals -- is so important to you. Back your theme with details and background information about your life experiences. For example, you might explain that your dad is in the military, so you've had to learn how to adapt quickly to new schools and unfamiliar environments. Or, you might discuss what it was like growing up in a poor, single-parent home, but how your family was always willing to take in injured or stray pets.